Using the industry’s most recognised storage benchmark for driving enterprise-level database workloads -- the Storage Performance Council’s SPC-1 -- DataCore took on the classic high-end external storage arrays with a fully redundant, dual-node Fibre Channel Server SAN solution, running its
SANsymphony™ Software-Defined Storage Services Platform on a pair of off-the-shelf Intel-based servers.
"With our first SPC-1 Price-Performance™ record, we set out to prove what could be accomplished with Parallel I/O in a single server, combining the benchmark’s database workload and our storage stack in a single, atomic, hyper-converged system,” said Ziya Aral, chairman of DataCore Software. “Now just a few months later, we are showcasing our progress and the effectiveness of multi-node scaling.”
Near-Perfect Scaling and Record Setting Response Times for High-Availability Systems
Improvements to Parallel I/O performance in the SANsymphony PSP5 code used in this week’s SPC-1 high-availability results are quite significant compared to the SANsymphony PSP4 code benchmarked only six months ago. The earlier single node PSP4 configuration yielded an average response time of 0.32 milliseconds at 459,290.87 SPC-1 IOPS™ with an industry best Price-Performance of $0.08 per SPC-1 IOPS™.
Interestingly, the SANsymphony PSP5 high-availability configuration with two nodes synchronously mirrored over Fibre Channel lowered the average response time by over 30% to 0.22 milliseconds at more than double the throughput (1,201,961.83 SPC-1 IOPS™), with a Price-Performance of $0.10 per SPC-1 IOPS™, securing the number three spot on the SPC-1 Top Ten List for Price-Performance.
“That should help to put an end to the myth that it is Fibre Channel latencies that slow down SAN performance,” Aral adds. “In our experience, the opposite is true. DataCore Parallel I/O speeds up everything it touches -- the fabric most assuredly included."
The Results Speak for Themselves
The new results put DataCore SANsymphony at number five on the SPC-1 Top Ten List for Performance, ranking only behind million-dollar mega-arrays including Huawei, Hitachi, HP XP7, and Kaminario, as well as DataCore's own Parallel Server hyper-converged configuration. The total price for the DataCore hyper-converged high-availability solution was $115,142.76, including three years of support.
“We see the Server SAN architecture at the intersection of the hyperscale, convergence and flash trends. Storage intelligence has been moving back adjacent to compute, and Server SANs should be deployed as a best practice to enable low latency, high bandwidth and high availability in enterprise applications,” said David Floyer, Chief Technology Officer of Wikibon. “The move to Server SAN architectures (aka hyper-converged infrastructure) has simplified operations by creating repeatable rack level deployments. DataCore with Parallel I/O software is demonstrating why these powerful multicore rack servers are becoming the basis for driving new levels of system performance and price-performance and is a foundation for next generation system architecture.”
Aral adds, “With these new benchmark results, we up-scaled the configuration to two nodes, connected by Fibre Channel fabric and reconfigured it for full high-availability with mirrored everything (mass storage, cache and software). Our objective was not only to set the performance record for hyper-converged systems, but to establish the corners of our performance envelope for the purposes of sizing and configuring what is otherwise an extremely flexible Software-Defined Storage scheme.”
Unlike competitive solutions, DataCore’s mirroring comes standard with the capability to support local and stretched/metro clusters with automatic failover and failback protection across active-active synchronized copies of data located in geographically separate locations.
Size Matters: Compact Server SAN for Lowest Total Cost of Ownership
In terms of lowering the total cost of ownership, it is also important to look at environmental and space considerations. Competitive storage solutions take up multiple 42U racks and many square feet of floor space, whereas the DataCore configuration occupies a mere fraction (12U) of one rack.
Unlike traditional storage arrays, the DataCore nodes had the combined responsibility for running the database workloads and handling their I/O demands in the same servers – a much more challenging scenario. DataCore’s compact Server SAN solution collapses the infrastructure needed and significantly reduces the networking and administrative complexity and cost. It can also be non-disruptively upgraded at any time with more powerful servers and storage technology available in the open market.
